I know it sounds harsh, but if people refuse to get vaccinated to protect their families and co-workers I just don’t see the downside if having them quit. If someone is making the workplace a hostile and dangerous place to work, employers fire such people every day. And the very people who are refusing to get vaccinated are the first to say they have that right. So, if these folks are willing to quit rather be fired, then they are doing everyone a favor. But as it happens, there are fewer people who are willing to follow through on their big threat than we might think.
Here is some new polling on vaccine attitudes. As you might expect the refusniks, who are mostly right wingers are still mad and acting like fools. However, the mandates seem to be having an effect on getting them to do it anyway:
As the U.S. continues to grapple with the “third wave” of the COVID-19 pandemic, the latest KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor finds that more than seven in ten U.S. adults (72%) now report being at least partially vaccinated, with the surge in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to the Delta variant being the main motivator for the recently vaccinated and other factors like full FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine and an increase in vaccine mandates playing a more minor role. T
he largest increases in vaccine uptake between July and September were among Hispanic adults and those ages 18-29, and similar shares of adults now report being vaccinated across racial and ethnic groups (71% of White adults, 70% of Black adults, and 73% of Hispanic adults). Large gaps in vaccine uptake remain by partisanship, education level, age, and health insurance status.
[I don’t know why health insurance status is an issue. The shots are free whether you have insurance or not. Maybe that hasn’t been well explained?]
Amid a slew of recent announcements about COVID-19 vaccine requirements, majorities favor requirements for health care workers, school teachers, college students, and federal government employees, but the public is more divided on employer mandates in general and on K-12 schools requiring vaccines for eligible students. More specifically, nearly six in ten (58%) support the new federal government mandate on larger employers to require vaccines or weekly testing for their workers, and nearly eight in ten (78%) support the requirement that these employers offer paid time off for workers to get vaccinated and recover from side effects.
Despite a lukewarm reception for employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates, such requirements do have the potential to further increase vaccine uptake somewhat. Asked what they would do if their employer required them to get vaccinated in order to continue working, about a third of unvaccinated workers say they would be likely to get vaccinated while two-thirds say they would be unlikely to do so (including half who say they would be “very” unlikely). However, when presented with the option to get vaccinated or face weekly testing (an option that larger employers could offer under the Biden plan), most unvaccinated workers (56%) say they would take the weekly testing option while just 12% say they’d get the shot and three in ten say they would leave their job…
Partisanship and vaccination status continue to loom large as factors in how the public views both the U.S. vaccination effort and the government’s response to the pandemic in general. For example, while Democrats are most likely to see individuals refusing the COVID-19 vaccine and not taking enough precautions for the current surge in coronavirus cases, Republicans are most likely to view immigrants and tourists bringing the disease into the U.S. as a major reason for the surge. Similarly, the top reason vaccinated adults see driving high caseloads is vaccine refusal, while the unvaccinated say the main reason is that the vaccines aren’t working as well as promised. Some express anger as well, with two-thirds (65%) of Democrats and half (51%) of vaccinated adults saying the current state of the pandemic makes them angry at people who have not gotten a vaccine, and six in ten Republicans (59%) and a similar share of unvaccinated adults (56%) saying it makes them angry at the federal government.
In June 2021, we conducted a nationwide survey, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, that gave us a sample of 1,036 people who mirrored the diverse makeup of the U.S. We plan to publish the survey in October.
We asked respondents to tell us what they would do if “vaccines were required” by their employer. We prompted them with several possible actions, and they could check as many as they liked.
We found that 16% of employed respondents would quit, start looking for other employment or both if their employer instituted a mandate. Among those who said they were “vaccine hesitant” – almost a quarter of respondents – we found that 48% would quit or look for another job.
Other polls have shown similar results. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey put the share of workers who would quit at 50%.
Separately, we found in our survey that 63% of all workers said a vaccine mandate would make them feel safer.
But while it is easy and cost-free to tell a pollster you’ll quit your job, actually doing so when it means losing a paycheck you and your family may depend upon is another matter.
And based on a sample of companies that already have vaccine mandates in place, the actual number who do resign rather than get the vaccine is much smaller than the survey data suggest.
Houston Methodist Hospital, for example, required its 25,000 workers to get a vaccine by June 7. Before the mandate, about 15% of its employees were unvaccinated. By mid-June, that percentage had dropped to 3% and hit 2% by late July. A total of 153 workers were fired or resigned, while another 285 were granted medical or religious exemptions and 332 were allowed to defer it.
At Jewish Home Family in Rockleigh, New Jersey, only five of its 527 workers quit following its vaccine mandate. Two out of 250 workers left Westminster Village in Bloomington, Illinois, and even in deeply conservative rural Alabama, a state with one of the lowest vaccine uptake rates, Hanceville Nursing & Rehab Center lost only six of its 260 employees.
Delta Airlines didn’t mandate a shot, but in August it did subject unvaccinated workers to a US$200 per month health insurance surcharge. Yet the airline said fewer than 2% of employees have quit over the policy.
And at Indiana University Health, the 125 workers who quit are out of 35,800 total employees, or 0.3%.
Past vaccine mandates, such as for the flu, have led to similar outcomes: Few people actually quit their jobs over them.
This refusal to get vaccinated is based upon arrogance, conspiracy mongering bullshit and tribal posturing. When it comes down to it many of these people will not give up their jobs for those reasons. They may think they are invulnerable to a disease but they know they are not invulnerable to financial ruin.